Jessica Duchen's Classical Music Blog. Music and writing in London, UK.

Monday, December 03, 2012

A Diable of a tenor: meet Bryan Hymel

You have to hear Bryan Hymel, the American French-style "heroic tenor" who's about to sing the title role of Robert le Diable at the Royal Opera House. He has already become the darling of Covent Garden, stepping in to replace an indisposed Jonas Kaufmann for Les Troyens earlier this year and earning out-and-out raves. I've had a good chat with him about Robert - especially about the particular quality of voice that is required for it, and that he has, and that is a rare marvel today: in a way, the white tiger of the tenor jungle. Just listen to this, from Rossini's Guillaume Tell.

JD: So, Bryan, how’s
it going?

BH: Really well! Each act has its own feeling and mood - it’s good to
get into each one. I’ve done the opera before, but only in concert. With this production it’s
exciting to see the possibilities, and the stylised
way that Laurent [Pelly] envisions the piece is great. It’s a lot of fun.

JD: What are the special challenges that you face in this role?

BH: First, it’s really high. The range and the majority of the notes lie in a very high part of the voice. This range and the length of the opera are the biggest challenges: my approach is to take it in little chunks,
digest them and make sure I’m singing as efficiently as possible. Fortunately
I had the chance to do it in concert, just concentrating on the singing and the music, so I was ahead of the game, knowing what to expect of that. What’s going to
make it exciting for the audience is also what’s exciting and challenging for
us, because all the four main characters’ roles are written that way. They use the whole
range, well over two octaves - and the soprano has almost two and a half octaves.
You don’t hear that very often, even in things like Lucia. It's extremely virtuosic singing,
but the interaction between the characters, especially Robert and
Isabelle, is also very dramatic. He thinks she’s left him
for another knight and he’s the scorned lover; and in Act 4 he has to fight
away the crazy nuns in the ballet. I think the spectacle and the drama will
be very exciting in the house.

JD: Do you
think the melodramatic quality and the virtuosity is what made it such an
incredible success in its time?

BH: I do, and I think you have to have the
singers and actors that can pull it off. And there are some wonderful moments – that’s an integral factor for any piece to stand the test of
time. Maybe it’s 30 seconds or one aria that the audience is waiting for - and there's at least one such bit in every act. There are some really beautiful stand-alone
pieces. I hope it
will be a reawakening of this repertoire. But it’s hard, especially when times are tough and there’s not a lot of money; a lot of
forces are involved in this opera, a big orchestra, the chorus and the ballet.

JD: How would you account for its neglect?

BH: I think it’s really
hard to cast! It’s difficult to get four singers together at the same time who can sing these
parts. They contacted me about this over three years ago -
it was planned that far in advance. At the time everyone was the same [as the concert performance] except
Diana Damrau who’s just had a baby – she’s the only one not here from the
original team. It’s not standard repertoire and none of us knew the roles before that. The last time it was done on stage
was in Paris in the late 1990s. You need the time to learn the role and get it
into your body because it’s not just about singing the notes. You have to be
able to do it in an artistic way while still giving the illusion it’s
easy. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to sing, by a good bit!

BH: I’ve never sung any Wagner – it's a different voice type – but I can certainly
see how Meyerbeer’s writing would have influenced Wagner's, especially in the ballet. The music uses very progressive tonalities for the time and it’s great
writing. It’s what probably gave Wagner the idea to make the orchestra an equal part of
the opera, as opposed to just accompanying the singers - I think Meyerbeer’s already
started to do that here. The ballet is almost the most famous thing
in the opera, not just because it’s great, but also because it’s shocking to
the audience – and not just because it’s nuns behaving badly. I don't think
the audience was used to hearing music that was so much part of telling the
story. It’s doing much more than setting the mood. There are lots of little
solos between instruments that I haven’t heard in operas written before that
time. I can see how Meyerbeer influenced Wagner in that way.

JD: Some people suggest that Meyerbeer is too "kitsch" to be convincing today...

BH: If
you want to be that way about it, you can – because there are some silly
moments. But if you're a Wagner person I think it’s hard to look down your nose too
much at anyone else, because the way the drama moves - slow and laboured - that’s part of the style you see in Wagner. And in general, you have to
suspend disbelief in opera to enjoy it. I mean, look at L'Elisir! If you buy into Wagner
being six hour long, then when you walk into the theatre you approach it from a different
place - and I think if an audience doesn’t do that, then they’re not going to
enjoy it.

Laurent Pelly has shrewedly set the audience up for this. Act 1 is set in a tavern,
everyone’s drinking and I think that’s an easy way to open the
piece. In Act 2 we have the jousting and the tournament: the horses
are red, yellow, green and blue, and the chorus singers supporting each horse are
painted the same colour, even their arms and faces. I think he has a way
of easing the audience into the opera and saying 'This is not what you might expect,
but let us lead you there'... so by the end, people will really
appreciate it. We’ve made some cuts that I think
help to move things along. The French, for grand opera, wanted a long evening
in the theatre – they went along for that! It
might be a little far for modern audiences to go there right away, but I think
we’re going to give it a good shot.

JD: Yout
high tenor role is something particularly characteristic of French opera?

BH: Yes. I would say that
Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Auber, etc, were writing for
a specific kind of tenor voice – it’s a very different style from the Italian and it involves
another approach to the high notes. Italians often throw in a high note out of
the blue and I think it was written in that way so that if a tenor had that
note he could put it in, and if he didn’t - and probably most of them didn’t! -
you could just go on without it and unless people knew the music well, it wouldn’t strike them as funny. Here, though, there’s no way not to do the high notes and
that’s what makes it really tricky. Being a tenor who sings this repertoire, I know that if
I’m not feeling 95 per cent, the note’s just not going to come out! Rossini wrote Guillaume
Tell in a similar fashion. The term at the time was 'heroic tenor',
because though it was high it’s still very visceral.

Meyerbeer and these guys were
writing for a specific kind of singer; those tenors were just starting to sing the high notes in their full
chest voice right before this was written. Some of them still would go
into the voix mixte. That wouldn’t work today: the theatres are too big and the
orchestras are too loud for those sounds to be heard.

When they first sent [the score] to me
I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. Three years down the line you think hopefully your
vocal progress will have continued to grow, but even though I could sing it at the
time, I wasn’t comfortable enough about saying 'OK let’s do the title role in
this opera at Covent Garden'. It’s been three years that this has been looming over
my head! Now that I’m here, thank goodness I feel in the best shape I can be in. Coming from Les Troyens I feel I have the confidence and a kind of
support and relationship with the audience here in London. I think we’re
going to present something they’ll look forward to. I feel strongly about the piece, I’m excited aboutit and through the rehearsals I've felt I’m in a good place.

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